Seeing as women frequently complain about men covering or discussing female issues (see abortion), can I complain about Courtney Martin’s piece at The American Prospect about the search to redefine masculinity? I don’t have a problem with her attempting it; it provides a good place to leap into a detailed discussion. In fact, I see gender concerns being so intertwined that it is one reason I so loath the terms “women’s studies” and “feminism” being used generically to apply to discussions of gender. Those terms imply it is about, for and by women. See my early post on “post-feminism” for a broader discussion of this. Now on to the article.

This contemporary movement of gender-conscious young men is largely identifying themselves in terms of what they are against. They’re not rapists. They’re not misogynists. They’re also not particularly effective in imagining what they do want to be.

Courtney cites what I consider an offensive term, that of a pursuit for a “feminist masculinity.” I feel this need to define a positive masculinity succumbs to the same problems that feminism had in condemning traditional femininity. The problem was never with femininity, but the expectation that women would fit that category. Similarly, most of masculinity is not inherently problematic (though there are aspects that certainly are). It would be bad to do away with masculinity and I don’t see the need to drastically redefine it. What we need to do is unbind being a man from being masculine the way that being a woman has been separated from being feminine.

I get some push back claiming that the feminine man is the least respected of the four gender/sex combinations, the claim is that a masculine woman is more disliked. I find this almost impossible to believe. You may get references to powerful women that sound degrading, but they hide a jealousy and respect. Tomboy remains the main term in adolescence for a girl who acts boyish. Tomboy is almost never used as an insult. There are almost no positive terms to describe a boy who acts girlish in adolescence. I know, because I heard most of them growing up.

Still, what we need is to not expect any set of given behaviors based on our sex. We should be free to be who we are, and have society find a place for us. If masculine and feminine personalities mesh well (as dominant and submissive ones often do) we could expect masculine men or women to couple with feminine men or women. I think this is why the search by those in Courtney’s article struggle to find a “good” masculinity. Redefining masculinity makes no more sense than rediscovering traditional masculinity.

Many young men, it seems, are stuck in stage one of gender consciousness. They want to prove that they are one of the “good ones” and separate themselves from all the gendered behaviors and beliefs that they now see as oppressive. That, or they wallow in guilt. (This is not unlike the stage many white kids get stuck in upon fully realizing their role in perpetuating racism.) At worst, this point of view is paralyzing. At best, it leads to burnout. It’s not until privileged folks, men in this case, can own the ways in which they have a self-interest in resisting systems of oppression that their work becomes sustainable.

I think this is important. It is not productive for men (or whites) to wallow in guilt about some inequality they are purported to be perpetuating simply by being a man (or white). I’ve stated before in commenting about racism/sexism that it is not sensical to blame men (or whites) for ways in which they benefit from a system of injustice upon which they have no control or input. I didn’t ask to be paid more than an equivalent woman so if I am, it is hardly my fault (actually, I’m almost positive I am not paid more).

But while it isn’t good to induce guilt when talking about identity, it is very good to show why overturning inequalities can be in the self-interest of the allegedly empowered. As a man, blurring gender constructs is greatly in my interest because I would no longer be expected by society (men and women alike) to live up to certain standards that I may not want to live up to.

But that is something Courtney seems to ignore completely. The masculine identity, as misogynistic as it can be, is not held in place simply by patriarchy and other men, it is held in place by women, who too often talk the talk of wanting softer men, but fail to walk the walk. At the end of the day, they are still drawn to those masculine men, and what really pisses me off, so am I. I prefer the same type of guy that I chide women for preferring to the exclusion of myself.

Ezra Klein points to the class implications of the Stupak amendment, in that it ignores the vast employer-sponsored insurance subsidies:

But as Rep. Jim Cooper points out in the interview below, the biggest federal subsidy for private insurance coverage is untouched by Stupak’s amendment. It’s the $250 billion the government spends each year making employer-sponsored health-care insurance tax-free.

That money, however, subsidizes the insurance of 157 million Americans, many of them quite affluent. Imagine if Stupak had attempted to expand his amendment to their coverage.

Of course, Ezra and I agree that we’d like to stop having the government subsidize employer coverage. This would at first have no impact on abortion coverage because there would be no subsidy, but employers would be less inclined to cover and more people would poor into the exchange where abortion would be covered. I read another comment about the Stupek amendment where the Democrats would accomplish their secret goal of single-payer through the public option and actually thus outlaw abortion.

One thing that is frustrating in this debate is that we seem to fall into a pattern of thinking that all coverage must take place in the basic health plan. But looking comparatively, this is certainly not true. There are many countries who define their basic plan as consisting of vital benefits a, b and c which are then supplemented by private plans for covering x, y and z. In France, about 80-90% of the public owns a supplemental policy. Canada has significant supplemental plan ownership. And because the major things are part of the basic plan, these supplemental plans are not expensive.

As I said yesterday, what is and is not considered part of the basic plan is something that would ultimately be determined by the political process (not that this is necessarily ideal). It is entirely reasonable to feel that elective abortion should not be part of that basic plan. There are plenty of ways to make abortion affordable and accessible without federal funding. Instead of fighting tooth and nail against public opinion, pro-choice advocates would be better off being creative to work around these symbolic obstacles.

I’ve not hid that I think Joe Lieberman is scum not worthy of the bottom of my shoe. It is quotes like this that lead to such an opinion:

If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote.

Listen, I’d disagree if Lieberman claimed he had to vote against the bill because he disagrees with it, questioning his illogical sounding argumentation about opposing the public option for budget deficit reasons, but I would respect his right to do so.

But making it a moral obligation to not only vote against but to filibuster? That is an outrageous claim. It is a symbolic representation of just how institutionally sick the Senate has gotten. I know it seems a long time ago, but ten years ago…hell, five years ago, the filibuster was an unusual device, used selectively. Now it is assumed. This cannot be tolerated. If the public knew anything about anything, there would be a popular revolt to get the Senate to eliminate the filibuster. Sadly, the public drinks the civic religion kool-aid thinking that Constitution is perfect and should not be touched, and seems to believe that the filibuster is essentially Constitutional, even though it is not.

It is just insane that we apply a super-majority rule to basic governance. And that is the real moral imperative…to restore majority rule to Congress (and California while we are at it).

I was planning on writing this post upon seeing the film, The Box, but there is a short film that provides a similar theme (not an uncommon one) that I can link and use as an excuse to address the topic:

The basic premise is that you can press a button, killing a random person, and get money. Now, I’m not sure how these are usually structured, but it seems that there is no cost to not pressing the button other than the opportunity cost of forgoing the ill-gotten gains. Call me naive or overly moral, but I don’t see how this should be a difficult choice. Clearly I would not be willing to subject someone to their death for money. I wouldn’t act as a contract killer, so why would I accomplish much the same in this manner, even though odds are the one to die would be some Asian or African kid living a miserable life in poverty.

But I suppose not everyone would find this decision so easy. And once you think about what they might do, it can affect what you would do. This is at the core of the Prisoners’ Dilemma coordination game (theory). In that game, a prisoner’s best option is to rat out the other prisoner but have the other stay quiet, but both staying quiet is preferable to both talking and staying quiet while the other talks is the worst outcome. Your ideal outcome is to talk, but that is the case for the other prisoner so you’d end up with your second worst outcome. How you behave is based on what you think the other will behave (when in a pinch, assume they would do what you actually do).

Anyway, if you suspected that there are many other people out there pressing the button, that might make it more tempting to press the button yourself. After all, one less person that isn’t you is one less person who might press the button to kill you. But going with the as you do, so does everyone else, you can safely avoid pressing button because doing so would be to sign your own death warrant. As it seems to be the case with The Box game, there is always a catch.

Listen, I try to have a civil tone here. I make an argument that there is a reasonable position to not use federal funds to pay for elective abortion. Those supporting that position, aren’t always so civil:

Writes Pilgrim Soul,

Charmingly I expect that in the next few days all your liberal dude friends will be trying to explain to you that this is really no big deal, look, they had to get the Republicans/”Democrats” onboard SOMEHOW, this is just a battle but we won the war, etc etc.

Actually, they’ll be explaining that it’s not a big deal because the Stupak amendment can be stripped out by the conference committee (which I very much hope it will, but am not holding my breath) and because there are potential loopholes (though I have yet to hear a convincing one).

This is not an argument, it is flatly dismissing men as being able to validly hold an opinion about abortion, at least if it one that a woman disagrees with. The post continues:

This has me so incredibly infuriated because it further segregates abortion as something different, off the menu of regular health care.

But you see, elective abortion is different. Forgive an analogy that will no doubt make some heads explode in rage, but the difference between non-elective and elective abortions is a bit like medically indicated breast augmentation and cosmetic versions. If someone gets a mastectomy as treatment for breast cancer or suffers from back pain due to excessive breast tissue, standard health insurance will typically cover this. Coverage of breast augmentation that is purely cosmetic is almost never covered. Such cosmetic surgery may (sadly) make a woman better off, and she should have a right to such surgery, but I don’t think anyone would support federal funding for the surgery.

Admittedly there are plenty of technically elective procedures that will be covered with federal funding. My knee isn’t going to kill me, it just might prevent me from being fully functional. All manner of wellness/public health measures could be counted as optional, though it would be bad for the country to fail to cover them. Abortion is arguably a wellness policy for the women involved (contraception certainly is). But that abortion is the subject of a moral debate is relevant. I don’t think anyone could plausibly claim that there is (or even should be) a constitutional right to a federally funded abortion, and absent that claim, it really is something best left up to the political process, a process that determined it is not ready to use funding for that purpose. Proponents have every right to make a political push to get the best treatment that is possible, whether it is federal funding or just a work-around to sort public from private funds.

As a pro-choice individual, I still think the matter of insurance coverage is a secondary concern (it being a polital one, not a civil rights one). Of great concern to me is the campaign of terrorism and general intimidation launched by anti-choice forces that have made lack of access (absent funding concerns) a real threat to the promise of choice, something that has been determined to be a right. I think that is where the focus of the movement’s energy ultimately should be.

Update: Kevin Drum offers a comment on the possible cost and insurance industry angle that I find interesting:

I wonder what the insurance industry thinks of this? I know that if I were an insurance company, I’d sure rather cover an abortion (cost = $500 or so) than a pregnancy carried to term (cost = $10,000 or so). But they’re probably too scared to speak up.

Would it be in the insurers interest to offer abortion coverage as a rider for free? I don’t know how many potential abortions under the plan would turn into pregnancies carried to term compared to abortions sought outside the plan. Either way, this incentive for the insurers to avoid paying for pregnancies would certainly seem to bring the cost of a rider to a pretty low level. With 1.2 million abortions performed in a year, I can’t imagine the odds of needing one for a specific woman in the public option or on subsidy (even though this population is very likely to be heavily skewed toward young adults) is very high. Perhaps a compromise for Congress is to have this rider established as opt-out for females and clearly distinguished from the standard funding pool.

About three months ago, I talked about the abortion debate happening as part of the health reform debate:

Aside from the presence of medical complications, abortion is an elective procedure. One does not NEED to have an abortion for the sake of their health. It is a matter of major life convenience. If our goal is to establish a minimum, essential level of health care for everyone, it would be hard to argue that abortion should make the short list for covered benefits.

This is not to say that it would be economically beneficial to skip on covering abortions. If the low-income women who would be on public plans or subsidized do not have covered access to abortions, they will likely have more children who will then need public services. Making it easier for these women to have abortions would likely save money over time (and if you trust the finding in Freakonomics, result in a lower crime rate).

This of course is the danger. Funding abortions and noting their effects on lessening the poor (and via correlation, minority) population starts sounding like eugenics real quick, such as this edgy quote from Supreme Court Justice Ginsberg. When it comes down to it, there is a notable difference between allowing abortions and funding them, and I’m not sure it is worth going there.

According to tonight’s amendment (if it holds through the process) abortion, coverage of which is already prohibited in Medicaid, CHIP, military/veteran care, federal employee insurance, etc. will now be prohibited in the public option and in the plans on the exchange (theoretically just for those using subsidies, but it the insurers won’t offer a subsidy and non-subsidy plan). At this point, this applies to a fairly small number of individuals.

However, nothing about this prevents insurance from existing that would cover abortions or outlaw elective abortion as a medical procedure. People would still be able to add an elective abortion rider to their insurance as they might add supplemental insurance provisions for any number of other things. With more people exiting the ranks of the uninsured (where I should point out, they were not covered for elective abortions), charitable programs that provided health care could shift attention to bolstering groups like Planned Parenthood that can provide affordable abortions.

The fevered pitch of the reaction to the Stupak amendment is a bit shocking if not actually surprising. One Democratic Congresswoman is apparently threatening to vote against it and Planned Parenthood is claiming it is an amendment “that will eliminate choice for millions of women.” This is just factually incorrect. It might make access more difficult than it was for some women, but it doesn’t affect choice. This does have a cost to society, but there are valid principles on both sides, and people value them differently.

I can say for sure that I would vote for health reform with or without the provision. The issue isn’t significant enough either way (the amendment simply extends the status quo) to outweigh the benefit that the bill does. As to the specific amendment, I would have to consider it very deeply before I cast my vote, but for the reasons stating in my past blog, I might very well support it.

With health reform passing the house by such a narrow margin, the provision was clearly necessary, and I am glad that they choose what could pass over some idealized bill that wouldn’t help anyone because it would fail.

MattY is upbeat about the value of a budget commission aimed at taking the tricky matter of long-term deficit/debt reduction slightly out of the partisan arena:

Politicians love commissions. They love them so much that journalists have come to love cynically deriding them. So now that talk of a “budget commission” to tackle the long-term deficit is in the air, people are being cynical about it. I actually think commissions are a pretty good idea since congress is so bad at designing policy. The real question is what would a serious budget commission look like?

I think Pete Davis and Bruce Bartlett have some pretty good posts on this matter. I would say the most important thing is for congress to not entirely abdicate its policymaking role. The key is to actually tell the commission, in a real way, what it wants studied. Reduce the deficit to such-and-such a percent of GDP relative to baseline and do it this percent with tax cuts and this percent with spending cuts. That’s a real mandate, and exactly the sort of decision elected officials should be making. Similarly, if congress wants the Pentagon to get special treatment, they should say so. With that done, having a commission try to work out the details within the framework of a congressional mandate makes sense.

This is relevant to me because, back when I was in the academic track, my likely dissertation topic was an analysis of blue-ribbon commissions and similar policy strategies. These commissions have the reputation of being empty gestures to avoid real action, but they also have a reputation of being a way out of partisan deadlock or in making difficult decisions (military base closings). There is a very limited literature sorting out what makes a panel effective, hence why I considered it a good topic for research.

This post is not about commissions, but about academia. I might, this very moment, be working on such research that might have a valuable contribution to the policy process, but graduate schools suffer from a rigid system of socialization that attempts to squeeze out originality or ambition outside arbitrary goals of the profession. This expected practice did not align with my styles of learning or thinking, so within their standards, I was a failure. So alas, I am no longer in academia and this research is left undone.

From a Feministing discussion of the film Precious:

In the book, the description of Blue Rain, the half-messiah, half-educator that delivers Precious from the bondage of illiteracy and abuse is as follows: “She dark, got nice face, big eyes, and…long dreadlocky hair.” (39-40) This character in the movie is played by Paula Patton, a light-skinned African American woman with straightened hair. By no means do I doubt the talent of Patton, but it means something that the directors chose to cast one of the most central characters of the film against Sapphire’s original description.

I’ll never get why black women discriminate so strongly against light-skinned black women. This actress simply wasn’t black enough for this commentator because she didn’t have this or that trait expressed in the book. Apparently the director “wrote out” the character’s color and sexuality. It reminds me of a few bell hooks readings in college, one where she shunned the black students at Stanford as being too white, choosing to hang out with cleaning staff.

The second she talks about beauty standards and how black features are left out. In the class discussion I mentioned that Halle Berry, a black woman, was presently the People’s Sexiest person. But apparently she was too light-skinned and white-featured to exist as any counter-argument to the claim that society thinks black women are ugly (though admittedly the same ok cupid stats I cited yesterday say that black women are universally unlikely to be responded to while white men are universally preferred).

It is part of this whole authenticity thing that was lobbed at Barack Obama during the campaign…was he black enough for the black community given his white mother and his (mostly) white cultural upbringing. It is pretty clear that a good portion of African-Americans have white descendants, so playing this game seems pointless not to mention counter-productive.

I think it is part of a victim mentality. You get so used to crying out about prejudice and disadvantage that when something happens to contradict that mindset, you have to be creative to find a way to disassociate it and protect your claim of victimhood.

I choose to outsource my commentary on Fort Hood to the Brits:

It’s a tragic massacre in the first place. It will doubtless increase suspicion of Muslim servicemembers, which in turn propels more religious polarization, which makes winning this war harder still. You can instantly see how the Malkins will spin this, and how a war on American Muslims can get jump-started in America.
The danger of this war on terror, it turns out, is that it not only collapses when it hits the ground in Muslim countries – as the sheer impossibility of using force to control Islamism in Iraq and Afghanistan reveals itself – but that its religious nature can divide the West as well, rendering a minority suspect and further undermining the chances of a multi-faith democracy successfully fighting a religious war without succumbing to more primal identities. Every which way, Osama wins.

Amen, Andrew Sullivan. This goes nowhere good.

Apparently free dating site okcupid also does surveys. Feministing highlights data on suicidal thoughts broken down by gender and sexuality (and nationality for Canada and US). They observe that bisexual women have the highest rate.

Now, it is not in the least surprising that there is a gender gap (women attempt suicide far more than men, though they succeed less often and women have higher rates of depression). It is not surprising that queer people have higher rates than straight people. It is interesting that bisexuals have higher rates than gays or lesbians. I think this is probably because gay people increasingly have an established community and established norms within society. Society still is not particularly equipped to handle bisexuals, especially bisexual men.

However, the evidence for this from the survey is shaky. The results from Canada seem to support this, the percentage of bi men is abnormally high in relative terms. I don’t really see a lot of other interesting trends (Canada has a larger gender gap and higher overall rate, though the sample size in Canada is smaller and this could be noise). It is perhaps interesting that bisexuals are worse off than gays but it is not surprising, sadly.

P.S. In other Feministing comments for today, I don’t think this on Playboy is very useful. Feminists like to talk about how media shapes the preferences of men, as if absent this men would suddenly en masse like obese women just as much as thin women. I don’t buy it. Taste varies greatly across men. If pop culture images were so powerful, men would have uniform preferences within a society. I guess I’m just not sufficiently postmodern to accept that all things are socially constructed.